News

How To Watch The Wisconsin Primary Results

by Amée LaTour

Wisconsin holds its primaries on Tuesday, with Republican presidential hopefuls competing for 42 delegates and the Democratic candidates vying for the state's 86 bound delegates. A lot is at stake on Tuesday: Wisconsin is an important state for Sen. Bernie Sanders' ability to narrow Sec. Hillary Clinton's lead, and for the likelihood of a brokered convention on the Republican side. Here's how to watch the Wisconsin primary results live.

There are a few different kinds of live updates you can tap into on Tuesday. One involves keeping track of votes as they come in. Polls close at 9 p.m. ET, and results will start coming in within a couple hours. I'm partial to The Guardian's live coverage of primary voting results. Shortly before results come in, the site will put up a page that makes it both easy and enjoyable to track votes. At the top of the page, you'll see two bars that will show which candidate is leading in Wisconsin on both the Democratic and Republican sides. Below that will be two maps of Wisconsin, one for each primary, broken down by county. As results from counties come in, they will provide a breakdown of which candidate is winning each, along with the total statewide votes for each candidate.

What's so fun about The Guardian's page is that it has Nintendo-like avatars for each candidate that color in the counties they win, while little speech bubbles pop up featuring the candidates' policy positions and quotations. Check out their March 26 primary coverage page for a preview of what to expect on Tuesday.

Another important thing to follow is the delegate count. An easy way to do so is to Google "April 5 primary," and an Associated Press box will be your first result. Associated Press will update delegate counts as they come in, and you can switch between Republican and Democratic tabs to follow results from both primaries. This method involves frequent page refreshing, but it's easy enough. Of course, if you have a television, watching any of the major cable news channels will give you both delegate and voter results as they come in. You can also check out live streams on major news sites, like CNN, NBC, or ABC News.

Finally, you can follow sites and channels that provide commentary and context for Tuesday's proceedings. There will be no shortage of that on major news channels and sites. The Atlantic is one option beyond the norm; it began its coverage early on Tuesday, featuring information on the new Wisconsin voter ID law and commentary concerning what's at stake for different candidates.

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

Whether you have a television or are relying on the internet, there is no shortage of options for covering your bases. There are several ways to keep up with Wisconsin's primary results, delegate allocations, and commentary on the primary.